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India got its freedom in the year 1947 and on 15th August 2017, we are stepping into the 71st year of the Independence. Kindly share with us your experience of August 15, 1947.

Born in 1925, I grew up in a family where active interest was taken in national affairs, and there was much talk of independence. The whole atmosphere outside the house was likewise emotionally charged with the urge to be free. All this led me to believe that slavery was the worst of conditions and independence the very best. Like many others I formed an innocent conception of the independence movement as being designed to bring the country straight out of hell and into heaven.

With all those impressions I waited for the day of Independence in a state of high expectation. It came finally on August 15, 1947. I was then 22 years of age and living in the UP city of Azamgarh. I still remember going out at night and seeing all the shops and houses illuminated. The new sense of freedom made me feel elated and as I walked along in a state of jubilation, I felt my feet were barely touching the ground. This was a state of happiness I had only so far read about. Now I was having my first real experience of it on August 15, 1947. Unfortunately, it was also my last.

Why do you say that the feeling of happiness was your last?

When the dawn appeared after the night of August 15, all the lights had gone out, and never again did they shine with the same brilliance. Never again in our state of freedom, did we experience the same euphoria as we did when we were as yet on the brink of being independent. We now had our freedom realized. The happiness we had expected had failed to materialize. This tragedy is attributable not so much to the British as to the Indians themselves. There had indeed been a problem between the British and the Indians prior to 1947, but the only solution offered was an intensification of the loathing the Indians felt for the British in the hopes that the latter would begin to feel themselves so alienated from the country that they would become unable to rule it.

It was in this atmosphere of antagonism that the journey towards freedom was made. The period prior to 1947 was marked by destructiveness; the policy of animosity and opposition proved highly effective. After 1947, there should have ensued a period of constructiveness inspired by love and fellow-feeling. But this was not to be. For reasons of a very convoluted nature, the politics of hatred persisted throughout the dawn of this supposedly new age. The failure to transform them into the politics of love proved the greatest obstacle to the realization of the Indian dream of post-Independence days—the dream which had sustained and inspired all Indians in the very darkest of hours.

What do you think the Indians should have done or should not have done after Independence for fulfilling the dream which had inspired them?

Before 1947, certain unwise Muslim leaders had wrongly advocated the idea that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations. This theory, responsible for their isolation had nothing whatsoever to do with either reason or Islam. Without doubt Hindus and Muslims have separate religions, but both are one nation because both live in the same country. That is why all the prophets have addressed their nonMuslim country-men as ‘O my people’. But in the post-Independence years this concept has not been effectively presented before the people.

So far as I can gather from my study of this matter, both the Hindus and Muslims are equally responsible for the problem facing the country today. Neither group has fulfilled its responsibility to the new India. It is the intellectuals in a community who lead the people. But in free India the intellectuals of both the communities have failed in this respect.

What can the citizens of India do now which can bring about the real progress of this country? Is there hope?

Hope should always be there but we should adopt the right methods. In my opinion we have to address the individual minds. Win the mind and you will win the battle is what I believe in.

All the Indians should come out of the negative thinking which they have fallen into because of one fear or another about each other. Further, I would advise Muslims to take the initiative in putting an end—on a unilateral basis—to all mutual discord. In the process they should not ask others to change their course of action, nor should they allow themselves to be provoked. They should abandon the methods of protest, complaint and reaction and should launch their movements on the basis of sound internal construction. If Muslims resolved all controversial matters on unilateral basis, they would be following the method followed by the Prophet of Islam.